III
Finally, Steevens' St. James's Chronicle letter on
The Second Maiden's Tragedy raises the interesting
possibility
of the direct passage of the (present) Lansdowne 807 volume from
Warburton's possession to that of William Petty, Earl of Shelburne, first
Marquis of Lansdowne.[48] Freehafer
states (p. 161) that "Shelburne did not purchase this volume at the
Warburton sale"; he logically points out that in 1759 Shelburne was doing
military service abroad, and that Shelburne was not known as a serious
collector of MSS until the mid 1760's. He suggests that the MS volume of
list and plays passed from Warburton to Shelburne via the collector James
West (d. 1772). Steevens' 1780 letter refers, however, to Warburton as
The Second Maiden's Tragedy's "last Purchaser but one." If
Shelburne, who owned the MS by 1782 (as Biographia
Dramatica tells us), acquired it from Warburton's successor (as its
owner) only between May 1780 and 1782,
he cannot have done so from West, who had died some ten years earlier;
and if, as is likely, he already owned it in May 1780, he is the purchaser
referred to by Steevens as the one following Warburton. Steevens may have
been wrong; but his statement obliges us to consider at least the possibility
that Shelburne began collecting MSS, perhaps through an agent, as early as
1759, or that the Warburton volume passed almost directly
from
Warburton to Shelburne, with merely a short, intermediate sojourn in the
hands of some professional bookseller. Certainly Freehafer's suggestion that
the MS volume passed from Warburton to West to Shelburne is unfounded
speculation only.[49]